Born to Die
by Pereybere
Summary: When a body is found in the ventilation duct in a prestigious hotel, the task falls to Brennan and Booth to identify the victim.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Born to Die

**Disclaimer: **Most of the characters beyond this prologue are not mine.

**Rating: **Eventually M. And by eventually, I mean if I ever get there.

**A/N: **Lots of the hospitality information mentioned herein is written with fiction in mind. However facts, procedures and protocols are taken from the job I do every single day. Most of the characters bear no resemblance to anyone I know. Well… the people who you want to punch, they are based on real people. Haha.

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Shalina adjusted a pile of cotton towels in her arm, nudging the elevator button with her free hand. As the heavy doors eased shut, she smoothed the towels, tracing the hotel's intricate emblem, a golden shape of infinity, with her fingertip. As the elevator climbed, the digital counter changed as each floor passed.

The Arches might have been prestigious with luxury beige carpets, original artworks lining the walls and silk woven draperies hanging from long windows, but the feeling of unrest permeated the walls, almost to the point of suffocation. Shalina knew there were few people who understood the reality, and she only learned to recognise it after years of wandering the same corridors, knowing each door, alcove, closet and duct. The troubled minds of those who had sought refuge seemed, almost to have seeped into the concrete foundations. She felt it, and it made her skin prickle as she stopped outside room 411, rapping her knuckles against the heavy door.

Shalina had seen guests of all origins pass through, most of them rich. But she'd come to learn that wealth did not guarantee happiness and she had witnessed much sadness. From several attempted suicides to one that did not fail. As the door swung open, she felt a tremble in her spine as she always did upon recollection of James T. Storm. She wondered if the dark haired man with eyes the colour of newly bloomed violets felt the atmosphere of death that choked her the moment she saw the new carpets beyond the door. She thought it was tremendously obvious that new carpets had been laid just recently. The wheat colour was different between the corridor and the bedroom. Mr Storm had left too much blood. The walls needed to be repainted. The carpets re-laid.

"Thank you," the guest said, taking the towels from her open arms. Shalina nodded once, dropping her keys into her pockets.

"You are welcome," she replied, stretching a smile across her face. Her cheeks already hurt from many more such forced smiles. The gentleman looked at her with a odd, vacant expression, easing the door shut until she had to shuffle back to avoid the wood knocking her toes. As the latch clicked into place, she shook herself, turning on her heel. There was rarely a time when it was quiet enough to linger over her troublesome thoughts. She hadn't actually stopped to contemplate Mr Storm in a few weeks. With new guests coming and going, it was difficult to find a second to indulge in the dormant thoughts that bothered her subconsciously and sometimes came to her in dreams.

She had seen only a glimpse of the blood, crimson red, leaving a dried line along the northern wall. The chain held the door in place, and with only his toes showing, the image reminded Shalina of a horror movie. She remembered how her heart seemed to stop, stilling in her chest. Her breath caught inside her lungs, stale and heavy until she almost fainted. Her feet were heavier than granite, rooting her to the spot, her eye pressed against the narrow strip that afforded her only a glimpse of the motionless body on the floor. Her first conscious thought was of how she would deal with the death in a professional and collected manner.

Shalina had eased the door shut, listening as two chuckling guests with golf bags wandered by, greeting her good afternoon. She should not have remembered the greeting in particular, except her very reason for standing outside Mr Storm's room was because it was seventeen minutes to one and check out time had been twelve o'clock.

Even now, she could recall the colour of their sweaters and how the little studs on the bottom of their shoes made indents on the carpet as they walked, wheeling their bags behind. One had a squeaking wheel that made noises all the way down the corridor, around the corner and into the elevator. Shalina waited until they were gone, before releasing a breath filled with anxiety, fear and trepidation.

When the news broke, the hotel became a buzz of activity and she was seated down, offered herbal tea and told to relax. But her heart refused to still and the colour images in her mind burned furiously against her retina. Her colleagues patted her shoulder, offering condolences as though she knew him personally. She felt only a deep sense of annoyance and inconvenience at the man's death, and perhaps a feeling of selfishness, too. Didn't he _think_ about who might find him whenever he pulled the blade across his wrists?

Even now, as Shalina stopped at the linen room, as saw the red marks and felt a tremor of sickness in the pit of her stomach. The other receptionists said Mr Storm wasn't the first and Lucia said he would not be the last.

"People want somewhere impersonal to end it," she had said, clicking her pen as though her statement were the most rational in the world. "And a hotel is as impersonal as you can get." While their theory might have been rational, it did not stop Shalina from feeling resentment at the man's need for an impersonal resting place.

Pulling open the linen closet, she stepped inside, easing the door shut behind her. The high shelves, lined with towels, sheets, pillow cases and duvet covers, cast the room in a bright white light that made her eyes hurt. Squeezing her lids shut, Shalina wondered, not for the first time, if it might be time to move on. The hospitality industry was volatile. The guests were rude, demanding, ignorant and often oblivious to the hassle she had to endure to ensure their happiness and comfort. Her painting was her passion and sometimes all she wanted in life was to sit behind her easel for ten hours a day, willing away the images of death, darkness and despair that would probably be forever ingrained in her memory.

The radio in her pocket tinkled and she sighed. _No rest for the wicked_.

"Shalina? Shal? Can you hear me?" The reception was crackled, making Lucia's voice sound alien, almost.

"Go ahead," Shalina replied, resting her forehead against a pile of downy towels.

"Six zero nine needs extra pillows," the alien voice said before buzzing off. Shalina collected two into her arms, inhaling a dusty plume that made her lungs wheeze. Coughing, she swiped her arm through the air. "Did you catch that, Shalina?" Lucia asked, sounding inconvenienced.

"Yeah." Above her head, she noticed the ceiling tile sat uneven on the frame, and a spiral of dust caught the light. "Lucia, have maintenance check out the ceiling in the forth floor linen closet." The radio beeped and she dropped the little device into her pocket. Reaching up, she pressed the plasterboard tiles, testing the weight against her fingertips. The slab crackled, parting and falling, leaving a gaping hole in the ceiling. She cursed, eyeing the exposed venting above her head. Reaching into her pocket, she found her radio. "Lucia? Can you tell maintenance the ceiling is quite urgent now?" At the other end, she heard her colleague laugh.

"What have you fucked up now, Shal?" she asked. "Curiosity killed the cat, you know." Shalina moved forward, debris cracking beneath her feet. She opened her mouth to retort, dropping her eyes to the floor. Like déjà vu with Mr Storm, her heart stilled and her lungs began to burn. In pieces beneath the sole of her shoe was the remnants of a skull, gaping eye sockets watching her, pearly teeth exposed as if in an eternal grimace. "Shalina? Don't touch anything up there. If you fuck up pipes, Billy's gonna kill you." She registered the same of the maintenance man – a guy with zero tolerance for fuck-ups, and in the back of her mind, far beyond the part that was preoccupied with the human skull at her feet, she realised Billy would be tremendously pissed at the annoyance of a dead body in the vents.

"Lucia? When you're calling maintenance, you're going to need to call the police too. We have a dead body on fourth."

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Have I witnessed a suicide before? Yes I have. This is a Bones story – but you can be guaranteed you're going to have some insight into the wonders of hotels. I need to share the grimness with someone!

Please review.

Brennan and Booth coming up. Bones in the vents? Right up their alley!


	2. Chapter 2

**Title: **Born to Die

**Disclaimer: **Only the annoying ones are mine.

**Rating: **Eventually an M. But for now, a T.

**A/N: **I am working today – so I figured I should get all my frustrations out of my system before I pass beyond the gates of hell. Please review!

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"I don't like hotels," Temperance Brennan said, slipping her fingers into a pair of latex gloves. Behind her, hesitantly glancing beyond the linen closet door, Seeley Booth frowned.

"That's why you prefer to sleep in tents when you're identifying remains?" he asked, catching a glimpse of the broken skull at the bottom of the shelves. Brennan knelt by the fragments, picking through the ceiling tile debris.

"No," she said at last. "That was because I was fifty miles from the nearest hotel. Booth? Evidence bag?" He held open the clear bag, watching as she rolled the skull to the bottom, taking it from him and sealing the top. The hotel manager, a fairly young guy with black hair and the sour expression of someone entirely incommoded, hovered against the wall, peering into the small linen room. "I've always been concerned with who I am sharing a bed with," Brennan said, shifting aside a pile of towels, making a small space on the wooden shelf. Booth cast a weary glance towards the manager.

"Well… you know…," he watched as she slipped her foot into the space she'd made, climbing the shelves to the gaping hole in the ceiling. "You should think about that before you get into bed with them, shouldn't you?" Brennan held tight to the metal frame, peering into the darkness.

"Flash light, Booth?" she asked, waving her free hand towards him. "And you know I'm not talking about sexual relations," taking the flash light, she cast a yellowish glow across the vent. "I'm talking about hotels. I could be sleeping in the same bed as a paedophile or a rapist or a murderer…" Booth blinked.

"Erm," the manager stepped forward, insinuating himself between Booth and the linen shelves. "We change our linen _every day_." Brennan glanced down, flicking off the beam.

"You are entirely missing my point," she said, jumping down, turning her attention back to Booth. "The rest of the body is wedged between two water pipes. Probably why none of it fell with the skull. I'll need help getting it down. I want it kept in tact as much as possible." The manager shifted.

"We have no evidence that there have ever been paedophiles staying at The Arches." Brennan pulled off her gloves, planting her hands on her hips.

"How would you know?" she asked, shaking her head. "I just don't like hotels. Nothing personal against this one." Booth pinched the top of his nose, trying to recall a time when Brennan didn't baffle and bemuse the witnesses. It was difficult to understand her train of thought sometimes. "Agent Booth might want to talk to the girl who found the body." The manager nodded.

"Shalina Romany," he said. "She's downstairs, but I'm not sure there's much she can tell you." Booth passed the evidence bag to Brennan. "How long do you think it will be before we can take away the police tape? We've had to hold off this entire floor. Not the kind of publicity we want, here…" Booth eased the linen closet shut.

"When we have gathered all the evidence," he replied vaguely. "Perhaps you can take us to Ms Romany, then?" Brennan glanced back at the closet, wondering why someone might hide a body in an air vent. She wondered why no one would notice staff or guests missing.

Following Booth and the manager along the corridor, she understood why people might think this place to be a safe haven. With the lovely décor, warm carpets and staff trained in all the pleases and thank-yous of hospitality, Brennan imagined many people swiped their credit cards for some luxury. Yet her skin felt dirty as she passed each room. How many affairs had been conducted inside those rooms? How many 'this is the last time. My wife is getting suspicious' lines had those walls heard? Men, seeking cheap thrills with expensive prostitutes, slipping their wedding rings into their pockets and forgetting about the heavy weight until their moment of bliss was over.

There was nothing luxurious about lies, Brennan thought. Nothing expensive about the cheapened things in life. The truth was, everyone had a secret life and hotels were the prime location for carrying out such secrets. "What's going on inside that mind of yours, Bones?" Booth asked, dropping his hand to her elbow. She turned her head, catching a glimpse of his concerned expression.

"I hate hotels," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "And I need to get the body back to the lab as soon as possible. It looks as though it's been up there awhile. Angela's going to have to make a face." The manager rocked back and forward on his feet, waiting on the elevator. Uncomfortably tense, he kept his eyes fixed firmly on the digital readout. "Hodgins might be able to find fibres that will determine where the victim died…" she inhaled, willing away the feeling of unrest.

The foyer of The Arches was as grand and intricate as any hotel Brennan had ever seen. Shiny marble floors, high ceilings decorated with gold leaf, glass tables that sparkled without even a hint of fingerprints, a miracle unto itself and receptionists with painted smiles. The manager brought them through a staff only door, to where the staff stood, hands clasped, watching them with polite but blatant distrust.

Shalina Romany was a small girl with dark hair to her shoulders and green eyes. She looked guarded, tenser than all the others. "Hi," Booth said. "You found the body last night?" he asked, and Shalina nodded.

"It fell from the ceiling. I noticed the tile looked as though it had been moved, or as if a weight was pressed against it. When I pressed it…" she paused, willing strength into her body. "The skull fell. I didn't notice it at first… until…" Brennan slid her hand into her pocket, lifting the bag with her other.

"You stood on it." Shalina's eyes lingered on the broken bone, the fragments of which had been dropped into the bag, too. Her jaw tensed, her lips tight.

"Yeah. I called Lucia who called Billy… he's the maintenance guy." Booth hooked his thumbs into his belt, running his eyes over the shelves behind Shalina's head. A row of neat, green files all branded with the hotel's logo, were an image of uniformity – perfect and tidy, he suspected the manager ran a tight ship.

"Any of your guests go missing, recently?" Booth asked, and for the first time, he noticed the manager's oval shaped name badge. Eric Petersen, written in cursive.

"No one has reported a missing person, no," he said. "The police were here last week, looking for an escort girl, but they found her. We…" he hesitated. "We were _completely_ unaware of what she was doing." The receptionists nodded, as though they were trained to do so. Except Shalina, she looked numb. Lost in a bleakness of death and despair. "Otherwise there's been nothing suspicious." Booth clicked his pen, snagging his notebook from inside his jacket.

"Her name?" he asked. Eric shifted, adjusting his tie as though he were strangled by it.

"Isn't that…?" _confidential_? Brennan suspected that a key point in hotel training was the art of keeping information closely guarded and confidential.

"I'm FBI, buddy," Booth said, testily. "I'm not going to advertise it." Eric nodded tensely.

"Adrienne Turner. Like I said, the police-"

"That her real name?" Booth interrupted.

"It said so on her passport, yes."

"Any staff go missing recently? Not turn up for work? Had a relative call in sick?" Booth's rapid-fire questions were often hard to follow, pointed and impatient, Brennan felt confused on behalf of the manager. If he was lying, he'd be required to think fast.

"No. Everyone's been accounted for. Except Dionne, she handed her notice in three weeks ago and finished last week." Booth scrawled on his notebook.

"Dionne…?"

"Castles. She worked in the kitchen."

As they left the hotel, Brennan slipped the evidence bag into the glove box of Booth's SUV, crossing her legs. "Seven hundred and fifty rooms. At full occupancy with only half of the hotel occupied by double-persons, there is one thousand one hundred and twenty five people staying in that building. That is over a thousand suspects, not including staff, and we don't even know when the body was hid there." Booth held tight to the wheel.

"It's no different to any other case, Bones. We sift through evidence, we connect the dots and if we're lucky-"

"We catch a killer?" she guessed and he tossed her a smile. One of only three that day.

"Right, Bones. We catch a killer."

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I need to go to work now, which is why I have ended this chapter.

I'm probably not fuelling any need to stay in hotels, and I'm definitely not doing any good to the hospitality industry. I'm just sharing a few of my day to day thoughts… who _does_ know who slept in those beds before them?

Review!


	3. Chapter 3

**Title: **Born to Die

**Rating: **T.

**Disclaimer: **Not mine. No siree.

**A/N: **Thanks to everyone reading and reviewing at the moment. I love reviews, they encourages me to write. So please, let me know what you are thinking.

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"Fabric tells me that the victim was wearing silk," Jack Hodgins informed the group, joining them on the platform. "Which tells me that she did not work in the hotel. Or if she did, she was not in uniform." Booth stepped back from the skeleton, carefully positioned on the metal gurney, her white, faceless skull inside a plastic box atop black form – kept away from contamination.

"How do you know?" he asked and Jack peeled his gloves off, triumphant and confident.

"I called the manager at the hotel, and he faxed through details of what materials make up their uniforms. The hotel shirts are made from 65 percent polyester and 35 percent cotton. It's doesn't take a genius entomologist like me to understand that polyester and cotton do not make silk. The gold neck scarves worn by the female members is produced using a kind of chiffon – but still no silk." Angela lifted her hand, her fingers smudged with graphite.

"Excuse me? I have stayed at The Arches, and I can tell you, the neck-scarves are _not_ gold. Perhaps a light bronze, but gold? No, no." She shrugged. "The artist in me would beg to differ." Hodgins folded his arms, tapping his fingertips against his bicep.

"When were _you_ at The Arches?" Angela feigned hurt, slipping her pencil into her hair.

"Ah, a dirty weekend at a prestigious hotel, romping on Egyptian cotton, soaking in a tub filled with jasmine and orange scented bath oils while outside, the Virginian countryside stretches on forever…" she sighed. "Even forensic artists can afford to treat themselves every now and again." Brennan pushed her stool back.

"Can we focus, please? Thank you." Jack watched Angela as she wiped the black smudges on her jeans. "The victim was a woman, approximately thirty years of age. She was five foot seven. Both wrists are broken, evidence of being bound. She's been dead for approximately six months." Booth slipped his hands into his pockets, rubbing his fingers against his palms.

"How did no one _smell_ her decomposing body? Hodgins, can you check to see if she was moved? Perhaps evidence of being somewhere else?" Jack nodded and Brennan cast her partner a glare, mildly frustrated but mostly amused that he could so easily assert himself inside her lab. "I'm going to take a drive back to Virginia, have a chat with the maintenance man." Brennan pulled off her gloves, dropping them into her pocket.

"Why?" she asked, following him along the edge of the platform. Below, on the main laboratory, the other scientists did their jobs, unaware, as they always were, of the murdered body just a few feet away.

"Only one person would have reason to be in the ducts. He'll have plans, blueprints of the building and perhaps we can see if can find more evidence." He winked. "You see, Bones, this is why you do lab work and I do field work." She pulled her hair into a high ponytail, following him down the steps to the front door.

"I can do field work, too," she insisted. "I am excellent at finding evidence." She felt her brows draw together as they stepped into the cool, late October air. "In fact, finding evidence is what I do. You _need_ me." Their shoulders almost brushed, their eyes meeting in a silent moment of fusing understanding. Booth did need her, even if the proud, macho part of him would never verbally admit it. Even if he preferred to insist he could still solve crimes, even if a little less efficiently than with her. "Do you have a bad feeling about the maintenance guy?" she asked, their feet crunching across the asphalt. Booth lifted his broad, sweeping shoulders inside his jacket.

"I don't know. Part of me thinks it would be foolish to stuff a body into the ventilation shaft, but then, part of me also knows that not even is criminally intelligent." Brennan nodded, knowing that murderers were very rarely clever enough to avoid being caught, and she made it her goal to always be more intelligent than the criminals who tried to outwit the law. Who thought it was acceptable to take the life of another.

Perhaps it was a personal goal for her, knowing that her mother was murdered. When she suspected that both her parents had been murdered, she had a raging fire of determination. When she stood over her mother's skeleton with irrefutable proof that she'd been killed, the fire became a furnace and now, instead of having a passion for identifying Ice Age skeletons, she preferred to assist the FBI in hunting down hardened criminals.

"Deep in thought, Bones?" Booth asked, tapping her arm. She swung her eyes towards him.

"I want to know who murdered her," she said, waiting until he unlocked his SUV.

"You always do," Booth replied, pulling his own door open. She climbed inside, slipping her seatbelt across her chest. She always felt as though she were embarking on some grand adventure when she got into Booth's government issue vehicle. She felt as though she had authority to enforce the law. Perhaps a small part of her wished she did. "You're good at that," Booth said, turning on the radio, firing the engine. She frowned. "Solving puzzles, answering the unanswerable questions," he explained, his large hands holding tight to the steering wheel. In her peripheral vision she watched his features change, his jaw tighten in contemplation.

"It's never okay to take a life," she said at last, turning away from him completely. "No one has the right to determine who should die and who should not." Booth hummed, the sound low and gravely.

"I agree. I don't think I was a natural sniper," he said, and his admission of anything related to his past as a Ranger brought her focus back to him. "I excelled at using a rifle. But I never excelled at putting an end to someone's life." She crossed her legs, brushing her open palm along her thigh.

"You mean you're not a born killer?" she asked and he replied only by glancing her way for a brief second. "Me neither. It's too easy to put an end to someone's life. It's _so_ easy." Brennan shook her head. "Doesn't it frighten you, Booth, that if a seasoned killer wanted to end your life tonight, he could?" Booth inhaled.

"I don't think about it, Bones," he said. "It is far too easy to get caught up in the paranoia of what can go wrong in life. We should look embrace what we know we have. I learned that working as a sniper. Life is far too short for worries involving uncertainties." They barely talked until they reached the grand sweeping gates of The Arches.

"Have you ever went away for a dirty weekend, Booth?" Brennan asked, lifting her eyes to the high windows, taking in the ornate design of the luxury hotel.

"Haven't you?" Booth asked by way of response, and she shrugged her shoulders, signalling that she most definitely had not. Perhaps it was her hesitancy to stay in hotels, a reluctance she had never shared with anyone but him, or perhaps it was because she simply never found time for a weekend of sex.

Booth laughed. "God, Bones, you don't know what you're missing. I'll have to show you sometime." She wasn't sure that he was supposed to say what he said, and she wasn't sure he had even realised himself. But judging by the tightness of his jaw and the blazing fieriness of his eyes, he did.

What bothered Temperance the most was that she wasn't sure she was entirely opposed to the idea of learning new and exciting things with Seeley Booth. In fact, while their relationship might not have been defined as anything beyond professional, and while Dr Saroyan had been putting herself between them recently, Brennan still couldn't imagine herself being with anyone else. It was a disturbing realisation that made her spine stiff and her jaw hurt.

"Bones? You ready to cause some disturbances?" He touched her arm and she jolted.

"Absolutely," she said, willing away her adolescent thoughts, forcing open her door and turning away from him, so she didn't have to imagine what a dirty weekend away with him would entail. And so she wouldn't have to answer the question of whether or not she'd still hate hotels after.

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Hope you like. Please review! Thanks!


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